THE DIFFERENT COST AND RETURN OF CRICKET FARMING TYPES: THE CENTRAL REGION OF THAILAND EVIDENCE

Abstract

This independent study aims to conduct comparative study between individual cricket farm and cricket network farm members in terms of initiation cost of cricket farming, including production cost, operating costs and total cost per unit. Additionally, the return of cricket farms are compared in term of return on investment (ROI), net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR). For this independent study, data were collected thorough in depth-interviews and observation of two cricket farmers in the central region of Thailand, including a small individual cricket farm and a cricket network farm member. The contents from interviews consisted of cricket farming process, production costs, operating costs, and selling methods. The major findings were that the cricket farm member had lower both initial investment and production cost due to gaining support from its parent farm; in addition, the commitment of the cricket farm member to sell raw crickets to parent farm 80% of production at $90 baht per kilogram, resulting to lower incomes than the individual farm. The breakeven points per a production cycle (2 months) were 78.46 kilograms for individual farm and 119.62 kilograms for network farm. Thus, the return as ROI, NPV and IRR of individual farm were higher than cricket network farm member. Research results pointed out that a key factor effects on cricket farms’ return was the selling price.